Inability to give fans inside info will hinder Moreland

New Cubs radio analyst Keith Moreland is a nice, easy, comfortable listen as Ron Santo’s successor.

Judging by Sunday’s exhibition opener in Arizona, Moreland is slipping in smoothly as the partner to melodious play-by-play man Pat Hughes.

Of course, I do have one reservation about the choice. Nobody’s perfect, you know.

The Cubs and WGN-AM could have seized the opportunity to hire a more recent major-leaguer.

In fact, my suggestion is that any color man with any team in any sport have an expiration date of three to five years.

Meanwhile, frontmen like Hughes would be the game’s long-term institutions.

Moreland played his last major-league game in 1989 and the last game of his six Cubs seasons was in 1987.

Baseball is the same in so many ways since then — 60 feet, 6 inches from mound to home plate, 90 feet from base to base, three outs in an inning, fundamentals still problematic, Tony La Russa still managing, Ozzie Guillen still yapping, Wrigley Field still standing ...

Yet baseball also is different in so many ways from 1989 — the salary explosion, more Latin superstars, the emergence of premier Asian players, drug testing, hot-dogging, probing media, new ballparks ...

So, to me, a player, manager or coach who was active during this century would be preferable to fill Santo’s seat.

Believe it or not, the best color man in any Chicago baseball booth over the past 30 years was Jim Frey on Cubs games.

Frey spent only one season in the job, but it was his year between being the Cubs’ manager and general manager.

Not only was Frey a contemporary of the people he analyzed, he wasn’t reluctant to say what he thought of them.

Such commentary is much more engaging than dissecting strategy, which becomes clichéd because it hasn’t changed for 100 years.

Baseball on radio is a game of stories, the fresher the better. Clubhouse walls can’t talk but the people who have sat inside them sure can.

Broadcasts should feature yarns but not about what Jody Davis was like as Moreland’s teammate or what it was like to play against Mike Schmidt.

Today’s announcers need to tell me inside stuff on what current players are experiencing in the modern era.

It would help if the analyst were a retired pitcher who sat in briefings outlining how to pitch to Albert Pujols, or a retired hitter who could explain what it’s like to stand in against Roy Halladay, or a retired Cub who could describe what the mysterious Aramis Ramirez is like behind closed doors.

Only somebody who played in the 2000s can do any of that but, to be fair, it must have been hard for the Cubs and WGN to find him.

I browsed the Cubs’ media guide and Todd Walker was the only recent former Cubs’ player I could find who fit the role.

Yes, sorry, Todd Walker.

I have no idea what he’s doing now but when Walker was a Cub from 2004 to 2006, he spoke better than he played and already seemed to have one foot in the booth.

Anyway, Moreland is the man now, he came across well Sunday, he’ll get better sooner than later and he’ll likely become everything most Cubs’ fans need him to be.

Keith Moreland will grow on me, too, but I just wish he could spin a yarn about flailing against Tim Lincecum instead of Nolan Ryan.